Will the Four Horsemen of Europe’s Apocalypse Ride Again?

Sir Harold Evans, editor of the crusading Sunday Times of London from 1967 to 1981, is one of the greatest journalists of his generation. In 1984, Harry, as he prefers to be known, moved to the U.S. where he was appointed editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly Press, editorial director of U.S. News and World Report and subsequently president and publisher of Random House. He is currently editor-at-large at Reuters. His books include The American Century and They Made America. Knowledge@Wharton talked to Evans at his New York home – which he shares with his wife, former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown — about his views on the future of Europe.

An edited transcript of the conversation appears below.

Knowledge@Wharton: In your review of Ian Kershaw’s recently published book To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, you wrote: “Why did Europe go mad during those years?” The four horsemen of the apocalypse Kershaw identifies are the rise of ethnic-racist nationalism; the demands for territorial revisionism; class conflict; and a prolonged crisis of capitalism. In the article you ask: “Might we not blunder again?” How likely is it that we might blunder again, in your view?

Harold Evans: We have already blundered over Iraq and Syria, and we have plenty of other opportunities to barge in where angels fear to tread: Putin’s cross-border ambitions for Russia, China’s in the South China Seas, the refugee crisis, the jihadist menace, the seismic tremors from the Eurozone currency imbalances.

Yes, the four horsemen are still saddled up, but they are less menacing than in the 1930s for two reasons: One, in 1941, the United States, after decades of isolationism, woke up to both its self-interest and its idealism in rejoining the world. Two, the shattered European states were led by political realists with vision (Churchill and Bevin, de Gaulle, and Adenauer). They were ready to be led by the United States in the creation of economic and security institutions that have given us six decades of peace and prosperity.

We have to hold fast to that vision especially when everybody is [dissing] the idea of a united Europe. Things are not nearly as bad as they were in the years leading to World War II. I think that in another five to 10 years, the refugee crisis will have been resolved. The economic migrants will either have been absorbed or welcomed back in their native countries and the asylum seekers will have been given sanctuary in countries led by politicians who can see further than the nearest frontier post. Germany has shown a capacity for economic and moral leadership to shame the 1930’s-style primitives, some of whom are leaders in Europe.

The imponderable, as we talk, is the United States. President Obama has not been much of a leader for trans-Atlantica, but all bets are off if the electorate votes in as reckless and ignorant a person as Donald Trump. Nuclear weapons? No national capital is complete without one. I have more faith in the U.S. electorate. I wish I could say the same for the nationalist electorate in Russia and the cowed masses in China.

“There are risks that Europe might blunder into another war, but European society strikes me as more mature and less flammable than it was then.”

Yes, there are risks that Europe might blunder into another war, but European society strikes me as more mature and less flammable than it was then. What was the Germany of the Holocaust is now the most welcoming of Jews. And the most hostile opponents of radical jihadism in Europe and the Middle East are not Trump and company, but Muslims. I think the lessons of history have been learned. It’s easy to feel despair by selectively citing supposed historical parallels.

Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s focus on the rise of ethnic-racist nationalism. We are seeing this in the reaction of some EU citizens to the arrival of thousands of people from the Middle East and elsewhere. How do the ethnic feelings of today compare with those in Europe between the wars?

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Evans: Nobody can deny that there is fear among Europeans of the arrival of large numbers of Muslim migrants. But it’s stupid to make all Muslims a scapegoat for the terrorist acts in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino (in California). It is tragic when nationalism and ethnic identity go together. The Hungarian government, for example, is behaving in a most reactionary fashion to the influx of migrants. Governments that tolerate hatred — and, still worse, incite it — perish by it.

Contrast the scares about absorbing newcomers with the way that West Germany integrated the East Germans after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I thought the East Germans would be indoctrinated with communism after all those years in the Soviet bloc, yet they managed to make a national community out of the new Germany that has recently behaved in a morally superior way toward the migrants from Syria and elsewhere.

Knowledge@Wharton: But isn’t the integration of Muslim migrants into European society going to be a lot harder than East Germans into one German nation?

Evans: I’d agree that it is a different order of magnitude. But we have to distinguish between the 15% to 20% who are refugees, the 0.001% who might be jihadists, and the remainder.

“The Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow got it right when he said that the EU governments threw Greece a lifebelt, but the rope was too short.”

Knowledge@Wharton: The tiny number who are terrorists, though, pose a continuing threat to create mayhem and thus sow enmity between local people and the migrants, don’t they?

Evans: Yes, but the last thing we should do is give ground to that enmity by persecuting and discriminating against non-radical Muslims. Remember that the bulk is fleeing from monsters who’ve kidnapped their religion and murdered their families. Don’t learn the wrong lesson from European history. We all want the European authorities to capture the terrorists and bring them to justice, but let’s not be so clumsy as to make them appear martyrs to their odious cause. Ted Cruz, who has lost the Republican nomination for president to Trump, came up with the wackiest notion that we should police Muslim communities already integrated in the U.S. His next speech or book should be: How to Breed Jihadists Without Leaving Home.

Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s turn to conflicts over territory. We see this in Ukraine and the Russian takeover of Crimea. As with Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, doesn’t President Putin feel like the loser after the end of communism?

Evans: It isn’t just Putin, though. President Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, believed that there was an understanding at the end of the Cold War that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not push East. He felt that the West betrayed that understanding. But this does not justify Putin’s actions in Crimea or the massing of his forces on the border with the rest of Ukraine. I believe he is an expansionist, and that, by invading Crimea, he broke his agreement that Ukraine was a separate country.

“Goldwater said extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, so I’ll paraphrase that, by saying that extremism in defense of a united Europe is a virtue.”

I was in favor of stronger Western resistance to Putin’s actions in Ukraine and have argued that President Obama’s response was reminiscent of the inaction of America (and France and Britain) in 1936 when German troops marched into Rhineland. Now, we have to make sure we will defend the Baltic States and continue to enforce the economic sanctions imposed on Russia. And let’s have a referendum in Eastern Ukraine and see whether people there actually want to become part of Russia.

One of the problems is that the polarization of politics has a mirror image in the polarization of cable news, so our media is not as helpful as it might be in forming a national consensus for an intelligent foreign policy. As for the Internet, it’s a wondrous medium for research, but the proliferation of social media has undermined the economic base of the national press for foreign coverage and investigation. Deprived by budget cuts of consistent, independent reporting, we are suddenly taken aback to find that Iraq’s [former] Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, had, for eight years, pursued a vendetta against Sunnis and we now have ISIS on our doorstep.

Network TV, with less financial justification, has closed many foreign bureaus; nowadays a correspondent drops in with a wind machine and looks for a bunch of photogenic palm trees. And the trend is for people to go to websites that confirm and reconfirm their prejudices with not much leakage of unsettling information. There are still millions who believe Saddam Hussein plotted 9/11.

Knowledge@Wharton: The two other horsemen in the 1930s were class conflict and a crisis of capitalism. Are there parallels today — the widening gap between rich and poor in Europe, as elsewhere, and the fact that many European economies have not recovered from the financial crisis that began in 2009?

Evans: Yes. I think the policies of economic austerity imposed in much of Europe were a huge mistake. It’s as if President Hoover were still alive. I think the Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow got it right when he said that the EU governments threw Greece a lifebelt, but the rope was too short.

But I want to add to the anxiety about the four horsemen by noting the possibility of the U.K. voting in a referendum in June to leave the EU. If Britain votes to withdraw, then this would probably lead not only to the weakening of the EU, but also to the breakup of the U.K., because the Scots would opt to stay in the EU. There is a depressing, primitive nativism among Prime Minister Cameron’s opponents in the Tory party.

Boris Johnson, leading the “Get Out” nativists, is a jolly fellow, but he’s also an opportunist who’d seize any opportunity to grab the crown. To be true to his advertisement of himself as Churchillian, he should get on his bike and not get off until he reaches Calais, where he could prove himself by sorting out the disgraceful camps of the refugees who’ve been turned away from the white cliffs of Dover. But the leaders of the “Stay In” crowd don’t show much inspiration either.

Knowledge@Wharton: You started off by saying you were more optimistic about the future of Europe than the circumstances might warrant, but now you sound pessimistic. So where do you stand?

Evans: I am like a man floundering in the sea, but if I hold on tightly enough to my lifebelt and if the political leadership and the media pull me in strongly enough, we’ll reach the promised land. But you’ve got to have a vision of a cohesive Europe or you’ll lose all hope. W. B. Yeats summed it up brilliantly in his poem, “The Second Coming”: “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” [The 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry] Goldwater said extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, so I’ll paraphrase that, by saying that extremism in defense of a united Europe is a virtue.

APA

Will the Four Horsemen of Europe’s Apocalypse Ride Again?.
Knowledge@Wharton
(2016, May 17).
Retrieved from https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/will-4-horsemen-europes-apocalypse-world-wars-ride/

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3 Comments So Far

William Shuttleworth

Some comments in no particular order, firstly about Ukraine. The crass stupidity displayed by the EU with the encouragement of the State Department could lead one to despair in its own right.
As a student of history, a former professional British soldier and a resident of Ukraine for some five years, it does surprise and worry me that the events that led to the annexation of the Crimea by Russia under Catherine the Great, the Crimean War in 1854 and the deporting of the Tatars for supporting the German Army in Crimea during the “Great Patriotic War”, an analysis of Russian and Soviet Foreign and Defence policy over last 150 years were clearly not even looked at before large financial support was given to Ukraine to foment the “Maidan” revolution of 2014. I have read the trade agreement with the EU and it was really an assession document that Russia would never tolerate. NATO at the gates of Sevastopal is too far to push Russia which has seen its defences move eastwards from the inner German Border to its border with Ukraine. That could have been tolerated under a broadly friendly regime in Kiev, but Russian paranoia was well and truly exercised by the support by the EU and US of an equally corrupt band from Lvov, Lviv or Limberg, the heirs to the SS Division Galicia which had behaved so badly in Poland in WW2. Did no one think that real Russian vital interests were at stake? 10,000 lives 1.5 million displaced, 2 oblasts effectively lost and the economy in disarray and now run by as corrupt a bunch as their predecessors? Many Crimeans (and I married one), feel and felt Russian first and Ukrainian a very poor second. In Soviet times it not really mattered whether the Crimea was administered from Kiev although it had been a proud independent state within the USSR before the Tatars backed the wrong horse.
The lesson I feel to learnt here is that the EU is incapable of understanding Foreign Policy because there is no

William Shuttleworth

Concerning Ukraine, the crass stupidity displayed by the EU with the encouragement of the State Department (or vice versa) could lead one to despair in its own right.
As a student of history, a former professional British soldier and a resident of Ukraine for some five years, it does surprise and worry me that the events that led to the annexation of the Crimea by Russia under Catherine the Great, the Crimean War of 1854 and the deporting of the Tatars for supporting the German Army in Crimea during the “Great Patriotic War”, and an analysis of Russian and Soviet Foreign and Defence policy over last 150 years were clearly not considered before large financial support was given to Ukraine to foment the “Maidan” revolution of 2014. I have read the trade agreement with the EU and it was really an accession document that Russia could never tolerate. NATO at the gates of Sevastopol is too far to push Russia which has seen its defences move eastwards from the inner German Border to its border with Ukraine. That could have been tolerated under a broadly friendly regime in Kiev, but Russian paranoia was well and truly exercised by the support by the EU and US of an equally corrupt band from Lvov, Lviv or Limberg, the heirs to the SS Division Galicia which had behaved so badly in Poland in WW2. Did no one think that Russian vital interests were at stake? Are 10,000 lives lost, 1.5 million displaced, 2 oblasts effectively seceded and the economy in disarray and now run by as corrupt a bunch as their predecessors a fair outcome for poorly thought out foreign policy? Many Crimeans (and I married one), feel and felt Russian first and Ukrainian a very poor second. In Soviet times it did not really matter whether the Crimea was administered from Kiev although it had been a proud independent state within the USSR before the Tatars backed the wrong horse.
The lesson I feel to learnt here is that the EU is incapable of exercising Foreign Policy because there is no acceptable EU view that can be enforced by Clausewitzian (military) means. For this we must thank God as had there been one, we would have involved ourselves in recreating a divided Europe; a far greater mess than we are in now.
Others may feel that loss of sovereignty is enough reason to leave the EU. I agree, but concerning Foreign Policy I could comment further. The Balkan Wars were provoked by German recognition of Croatia; another country with some unexorcised demons. And now we have relentless immigration through poorly thought out wars in the Middle East.
The UK has to leave.

T Mac

“We have already blundered over Iraq and Syria”

The second war in Iraq is the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century.

To refer to it as a “blunder” is blasphemy to the 1,000,000 Iraqis who died as a direct result of US / UK actions.

If a German journalist referred to the Holocaust as a “blunder” there would be outrage.

“I was in favor of stronger Western resistance to Putin’s actions in Ukraine”

The situation in Ukraine was provoked by a US backed coup which installed anti-Russian and anti-Semitic elements in a transitional government.

Russia annexed Crimea (illegally) without killing one single person.

US / NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have killed hundreds of thousands.

Does Sir Harold Evans support resistance or justice for the far worse crimes of the West, or is he only troubled by Russia’s far inferior crimes?

“the EU governments threw Greece a lifebelt”

No they didn’t. They reimbursed German banks for the money they lost due to their reckless behavior and incompetence.

The cost of rewarding the Germans for their folly was the destruction of Greek society.

“Sir Harold Evans … is one of the greatest journalists of his generation.”